In a mad blitz, my friend Matiss and I played 50 rounds of WeeWar tonight. It was amazing. One of the great things about WeeWar is that it is turn-based. That way you can play with a bunch of people, and they can just take their turn when they are able to, rather than everyone having to be online at the same time. So that means that normally people only play a few rounds a day… not fifty. Needless to say, I’m a little cooked right now, but this definitely scratched the WeeWar itch that was plaguing me.

We’re playing a particularly ridiculous game at the moment where we have limited the units to Guys for me and Tanks for Matiss. I cleverly called it “Guys vs. Tanks”.  You can see the game here.

PS: If you click the banner above and sign up, I get extra credit, and may someday become cool.

Harper, Matiss and I showed up with a bag full of juggling machetes and two pumpkins.

We carved this one in advance, and the other was to be carved while we juggled.

Two guys passed six knives between them, and the thrid guy had an extra knife and hacked at the pumpkin for a second before cycling back into the pattern and letting the next guy take a few swings at it.  After a few minutes of reducing the pumpkin to a paste, Matiss stood in front of the slain gourd and did some solo tricks while Harper and I not-so-discretely switched the slain pumpkin for the nicely carved one we had kept hidden.  We got a good reaction from the audience, it was a lot of fun, and I really look forward to seeing the video tape.

I have to admit though that I was the weak link in the whole operation.  It turns out that it’s a lot harder than I realized to juggle knives for that long.  Harper and Matiss had recently been doing a knife act so they were used to it, but once my forearms cramped up I started dropping a lot.

On Saturday the three of us went down to Dailey Plaza and saw the Midnight Circus Halloween show.  It was really fun.  I highly recommend it.  I guess they do slightly different shows throughout the day, so if I can get back up to Chicago before Halloween I will have to camp out for the whole day.  After the show we got to hang out with Keith Bindlestiff of the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus.  Always a good time.

Jeni was gone, so Adolfo and I got to have a Man Weekend. We did Man things like make “wraps” (black beans, cilantro, green onions, sour cream, hot sauce, cheese, and green pepper on flour tortillas… and no, they weren’t burritos), eat unbelievably good ice cream sandwiches, walk the dogs, go shopping, drink smoothies (Adolfo is a master smoothie maker), and play video games. You know… man stuff. It was awesome.

Bay Fest went well, with decent crowds, especially Sunday afternoon. I had standing room only, and it was an outside show. I got to eat some delicious sweet corn. I’m still regretting that I only ate one ear. What was I thinking?

The drive home was BRUTAL (8 hours with no help from Vader with the driving), but at least I got to stop in Chicago and see my friends Harper, Hiromi (visiting from Japan!), Matiss and Erica.

Lenore couldn’t ship her artwork. No address, no shipping. So we had to go earlier than she had originally planned so we could take the work up ourselves. I wasn’t originally going to go with her, but we had to leave pretty early, and she wanted some help with the driving. I had nothing else specific going on and I have plenty of people I like to see in Chicago, so off we all went.

The show ended up being in the Merchandise Mart, and after a rather frenzied set-up day I think things went fairly smoothly.

After dropping Lenore off at the show, Vader and I headed up to threadless to have lunch with Harper. I was very pleased that I got to eat at one of my favorite restaurants again, Taste of Lebanon. You can read more about it on my Favorite Restaurants page. Their lentil soup is SO good. I can’t go there and not have it. Although this is the second time I have gotten it to go, and of course it’s still good, but I think it actually tastes better if you eat it in the restaurant.

After lunch Vader and I headed downtown for a radio interview. The night before we left, Charlie, the podcast guy from threadless, called me up and asked me if I would do a radio interview for his class at Columbia. I realize now that I never actually asked him what the interview was really for, but I assume it was a project for some sort of radio class he was taking. The interview went really well, and was a lot of fun. Like any guy (especially any entertainer guy) I love talking about myself and how great I am, so I naturally enjoyed that part. What made it even cooler though was that we were in a very professional room with very fancy and expensive looking mics, and we had our very own sound tech “running the board”. I don’t really know what that means, but she was doing some cool radio stuff on the other side of the little window in the wall. After the interview was over Charlie asked me to do a few yo-yo tricks for his classmates, and there was much rejoycing.

The next part of the day was to head back up around Andersonville for a run on the beach (with Vader doing most of the running), and after so much car time Vader was very happy to be able to run around and jump in the waves for a bit. When we were finished with our walk, we picked up Matiss from work and went off for an evening of video-games. It was a pretty great day all in all, and nothing makes a great day better than capping it off with videogames.
I spent a couple of days hanging out at Harper and Matiss’ house, and then went off to Geneva to visit Lenore’s sister and family for a day before picking up Lenore and heading back home on Sunday. Geneva is always fun too. Besides the good company and the dog walking, I get to play tag, hide and seek, and Lego non-stop. Also, before I left on Sunday, we all went to brunch at the Hilton (I think). They had an entire conference room just for the food. Not only did the omlette guy make a special omlette just for me, but after the meal you could go over to the glorious desert table, and dip your desert into the chocolate waterfall. Seriously. A waterfall of chocolate. I suppose it’s really a chocolatefall, but if I had said that from the beginning you wouldn’t have known what I was talking about.

Lenore sold three pieces at the show, and had a lot of interest. It was great. You can see hew work at lenorethomas.com